NSA Tracking Cellphone Locations Worldwide 256
Posted
by
timothy
from the relax-citizens-we're-only-watching-you-closely dept.
from the relax-citizens-we're-only-watching-you-closely dept.
tramp writes "The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable. Of course it is 'only metadata' and absolutely not invading privacy if you ask our 'beloved' NSA." Pretty soon, the argument about whether you have in any given facet of your life a "reasonable expectation of privacy" may take on a whole new meaning. Also at Slash BI.
Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it absolutely will not. People need to get through their heads that just because your rights are violated, that doesn't mean expecting them not to be becomes unreasonable. If someone breaks into your house every day, it doesn't become "reasonable" for them to do so, or unreasonable for you to expect people to stay out of your house.
The logic espoused by the quoted idea is the same as saying if police were to start strip searching everyone without cause, it would be reasonable simply because it always happens.
Stop that.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is. Gone through an airport lately?
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Oh, you mean in the US? No, are you nuts?
Take a wild guess why.
I used to make long and rather expensive vacations in the US. It was a great country to spend some fun time (and quite a few 1000 bucks) in. It's no longer the case, sadly.
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I used to make long and rather expensive vacations in the US. It was a great country to spend some fun time (and quite a few 1000 bucks) in. It's no longer the case, sadly.
Ditto. And I live in Dallas!
If I have to go through Customs-level inspection every time I get on a damned airplane, I might as well go to somewhere really worth it. June in Ireland was beautiful. Looking forward to Germany and the Rhine Valley next year.
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Also in Dallas. Hate D/FW airport. Enjoy Germany, beautiful country. Croatia is also a great place to vacation. My next trip is Bucharest.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:4, Interesting)
Er. No. Three letter agency spying on US citizens is illegal. Period. Ever read the 4th amendment to your constitution? Perhaps you should.
Yes, it is. Gone through an airport lately?
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"TSA" appears to be a three letter agency. 4th Amendment doesn't seem to be even slowing them down.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
hmm, a government that has stopped representing the will of the people and does all it can to continue along its self-protectionist ways, stepping on any chances of change.
sound like anything you've studied in history, before?
we're watching history in the making right now even though many of us don't realize it.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Funny)
we're watching history in the making right now even though many of us don't realize it.
I'm not. History was removed from my basic cable lineup.
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You volunteered to be screened by the TSA. No one forces you to use commercial airlines when you travel. Also if you enter in any governmental building (federal, state, or municipal) you may see a sign informing you that by entering the building that you are subject to search.
The 4th amendment is suppose to protect you from government search and seizure in your own premise. Logically that extends to your cell phone that is on your person. As far as the 4th amendment is concerned, NSA is violating it while
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No one forces you to use commercial airlines when you travel.
Um... What other airlines are there? Military, perhaps, but I don't expect that they take on civilian passengers very often.
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You can always charter a flight. You can have your rights, if you're rich.
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Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
**WARNING: SLIPPERY SLOPE DETECTOR ACTIVATED**
"No one forced you to use the train/subway/bus so of course they should be able to search you" (Already happening)
"No one forced you to drive on public roads so of course they should be able to search you" (They are working on deploying scanner tech for the roadside right now)
"No one forced you to use public sidewalks so of course they should be able to search you"
Uh. I guess I'll stay in my house?
Re: (Score:2)
The 4th amendment is suppose to protect you from government search and seizure in your own premise.
Where does it say that? All I see is this:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated
It doesn't state where you have to be to get those rights. It doesn't say you can be secure in your houses only. It lists those other things (persons, papers, and effects) precisely so the government can't wait around for you to leave your house and then search you or your stuff.
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Yeah I have, many times, I travel internationally a lot for work and have family in a different state and enjoy foreign vacations. I have to put my keys and coins in a basket and then I walk through a metal detector. Totally painless and a minor inconvenience, understandable in the light of things. Not any worse, better, or different, in foreign countries than in the US. I don't understand why the lunatic fringe of Slashdot treats this short procedure as some unconscionable violation of basic human righ
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Informative)
Then you don't travel very much, meaning to different locations. I have flown out of San Jose and get the minimal treatment you describe. Go to Reagan Intl. in DC and it's a very different experience which leaves you feeling violated. Detroit and Dallas are somewhere in the Middle of the two depending on your luck in getting into line.
The lack of consistency from a group that is allegedly working from the same playbook is both confusing and concerning.
I drive most places and don't see "voluntary DUI checks" or mandatory "fruit and vegetable inspections". I have at times run into those things as well, so know they happen first hand.
Just because you have not experienced bad things does not mean they don't exist. If have doubts and you do fly a lot, change your name to Sadam and book a flight. I'm sure you will get a nice dose of treatment people complain about.
You are like the guy living in the suburbs that thinks inner city gangs are not really a problem. Move your ass downtown and your opinion would change rather quickly.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with a lunatic fringe. It has to do with not being treated like a criminal by default, which is what the TSA does. You are a criminal, plain and simple, unless you can prove otherwise.
That mantra is the complete opposite of presumed innocent until proven guilty. If you feel like being treated as a criminal is acceptable, then there is no hope for democracy.
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As s.petry points out, YMMV. I have a prosthetic hip and various other bits of ferromagnetic material embedded inside me. That triggers said metal detectors. That means I get patted down. Every. Damned. Time.* And I fly a lot. I'm on a first name basis with a number of TSA agents at our (small, rural) airport.
While it doesn't trigger PTSD or other major psychological pain, it's is annoying to have some stranger ram their hand up their crotch in full view of everyone else. I've been delayed in larger a
That's EXACTLY how it works. (Score:5, Insightful)
Precedent is a bigger component of the law than logic is.
Don't mistake the way you'd like things to work from the way they actually work.
Resigned much? (Score:2)
Between precedent and law stands PROTEST!
Re:That's EXACTLY how it works. (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither mistake unilateral actions of the executive for actions taken with permission of the judiciary.
Precedent applies to the judiciary. They do not take the fact "we are already doing this" as a legal precedent.
And how do you think precedents get set, exactly? The judiciary takes a logical view and makes a logical decision. Precedent merely means not having to do that every single time afterwards.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't underestimate how readily willing humans are to adapt. There are places in the world where having your house broken into every day has nearly become the norm and people have decided to adapt to the new situation instead of fighting it.
If you want to fight something like this you have to do it before it becomes the accepted norm.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Informative)
Before you fight it, you have to know it's happening.
Without Snowden, no one outside of the NSA would know all this has been happening for a decade.
Which makes it all the more bizarre that people think Snowden is a traitor. He shone the light on all the illegality of the government.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
its only the faux news crowd that has been spoon-fed the bullshit that snowden is a traitor or bad guy. those idiots believe anything they are told if its given the right angle that appeals to core fears and 'warm fuzzies' in that demographic.
the rest of us fully realize that snowden was this centuries highest hero in the right for freedom. worldwide freedom; which has - to my knowledge - NEVER been fought for before (its always been about 'my country vs yours' but now the whole world realizes we are all being taken advantage of, as whole, regardless of borders!
this fight for freedom IS world-wide, make no mistake. pretty much every other country holds snowden in high esteem (the people, that is; their leaders are all on the wrong path but that's a given in today's corrupt world, sad to say).
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, I never knew Nancy Pelosi was one of "the faux news crowd".
You can't assign this to conservatives. You can find plenty of conservatives that think Snowden is a hero--and plenty of liberals who say Snowden's a criminal and think the NSA should be give free rein to "protect" us.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:4, Insightful)
its only the faux news crowd
You mean like the President? I don't think he watches a lot of Fox.
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. The leftist "big gov't is always right" crowd wants to nail him just as much. How dare he have the audacity to paint the result of the granting of unchecked Federal power in a negative light to the serfs?
This is NOT a left- or right-wing issue. Both parties gleefully hate your freedoms and civil liberties and take turns shitting on the Constitution while playing people against one another with wedge issues like abortion, gay rights, and illegal immigration. And people like you who put the blame on one side but not the other are part of the problem.
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Privacy as a right is not an absolute unchanging concept because "privacy" is not an absolute concept. It changes.
Someone's idea of privacy in Victorian London 1880 may not to be regarded as either a right, or even reasonable, in Atlanta in 2013. Whether it's a change for the better or worse is a matter of opinion, of course.
There is nothing to suggest that the concept of "privacy" won't continue to change in the future, while still remaining what people think of as a right. Obviously your example is ex
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly!!! Well illustrated points.
Standards of "reasonable-ness" in the US and UK are completely screwed up. More importantly, claiming illegal actions "reasonable" does not make them any less unlawful, now does it?
No, it absolutely will not. People need to get through their heads that just because your rights are violated, that doesn't mean expecting them not to be becomes unreasonable. If someone breaks into your house every day, it doesn't become "reasonable" for them to do so, or unreasonable for you to expect people to stay out of your house.
The logic espoused by the quoted idea is the same as saying if police were to start strip searching everyone without cause, it would be reasonable simply because it always happens.
Stop that.
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Top-posting, on Slashdot? What are the bouncers doing?!?
Re:Reasonable expectations (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with you, of course.
But at the same time, I get what they mean too, and I think it's the result of some poorly chosen words on the part of judges decades ago. They never should have referred to it as an "expectation", since our expectations are shaped by the world around us, regardless of the legality of what is taking place in it. As such, if we're aware of widespread surveillance that is taking place, then technically we should have no reasonable expectation of privacy, even though we may have reason to believe that it should exist.
What we need is a different word. Something that refers to an expectation that is only shaped by things occurring as they are supposed to. I suppose we have "wishful thinking", but I was hoping for something that sounded a bit better than that.
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> No, it absolutely will not. People need to get through their heads that just because your rights are
> violated, that doesn't mean expecting them not to be becomes unreasonable
The problem is it already has become that. Expectation of privacy is a "god of the gaps" problem. You have it, except where there is some reason you don't....and those reasons keep expanding. Most, taken individually are small: But even a large container can be filled and then buried in the smallest grains of sand.
The thing is,
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The logic espoused by the quoted idea is the same as saying if police were to start strip searching everyone without cause, it would be reasonable simply because it always happens.
But they already have been doing that:
http://news.yahoo.com/police-turn-routine-traffic-stops-into-cavity-searches-201433510.html [yahoo.com]
http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/3rd-target-of-body-cavity-searches-comes-forward/ [wnd.com]
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/justice/new-mexico-search-lawsuit/ [cnn.com]
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/troopers-texas-probe-genitals-women-traffic-stops-article-1.1414668 [nydailynews.com]
And dont have your dog along:
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/video?clipId=9513174&autostart=false [myfoxatlanta.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com/police- [businessinsider.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's completely totally up to **US** to demand our government do its job & obey our rights
Please tell us your plan to demand thees things so I can follow along.. Since you have it all figured out..
identify specific policy problem (Score:2)
my plan is simple...actually it's Thomas Jefferson & other founders plan...
what government policy is effecting the behavior you don't agree with?
what do *you* specifically want to change?
identify that, then use your powers as a citizen to advance policy that would be different
this work happens every day on every possible policy...I used to be a social studies teacher & the idea is that theoretically only a person who didn't finish high school or a non-US person should be asking "how" our system work
Re:identify specific policy problem (Score:5, Insightful)
then use your powers as a citizen to advance policy that would be different
may I remind you that fixing the government, way back then, was possible by regular people. the gov didn't control nukes and stuff, back then.
now, the armed forces and the local police (no diff anymore, sigh) will do all they can to 'follow orders' and won't let an uprising happen. each time we've tried, lately, the news media (owned by the government, for all practical purposes, even though not directly or literally) refuses to cover the events or makes the protesters look like 'bad guys' and they laugh it off. then they go to commercial.
you have the nsa keeping tabs on everyone and so you can't even gather in groups in private without them knowing (take your phone batteries out; if you even can, anymore). clear your gps in your car (oh right, you can't clear the obd2 blackbox that is mandated in every new car these days).
every thing that we could use to regain control has been thought of and 'worked around' by our oh-so-wonderful government. they realize that we are Pissed Off and they will do all they can to stop any revolt or even simple protest.
I don't see any peaceful solution and I shudder to think of the alternative.
I do fear that my memories of what was a free country will be all that's left for the next 1 or even TWO generations.
identify specific policy (Score:2)
if the "government" is doing something, it is somehow under government power
what, specifically, would you want to see changed?
you mention "armed forces and the local police will do all they can to 'follow orders'..."
so you would like local police forces to have different policies when dealing with protesters?
which city? during Occupy many cities had different responses...
if you identify the city then you can determine if police policy is controlled by the Mayor or a City Council
that's one example...just bas
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I'll use florescent markers, I promise!
Or I can use the several million dollars I got stashed away to donate to campaigns of those politicians who are "the good guys".
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1. Write, e-mail, and call them, let them know what you think and what you want them to do. Do this even when you agree with their stance on an issue, they need the pat on the head just like a dog. When writing to them don't be a partisan hack and name call (I have responded to a rather patronizing letter from one of my senators like that but never with the initial contact on an issue)
2. Show up at one of their town hall meetings (my stupid rep to the
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Why does the fact that governments spy mean we, the people who run this country, can't hold them accountable?
We can't because we have demonstrated that we can't as others have pointed out these things only came to light because of Snowden, and most of it has been happening for a decade!
Having programs on the scale the NSA is running them and having them be secret is fundamentally incompatible with representative democracy. How exactly are "We the People" suppose to hold anyone to account, judge their actions as legislators and executives etc when we can't and don't know what is being done with billions of our dol
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If you let the attacks change your way of life, if you're so afraid that you prefer protection over freedom, the terrorists win!
You don't want the terrorists to win, do you?
(Rhetoric works both ways!)
Re:^ mod up (Score:5, Insightful)
With all this 'fear', the terrorists have already won. Rhetoric or not.
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Re:^ mod up (Score:4, Insightful)
How is that different?
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Fuck You, USA (Score:4, Insightful)
What else is there to say.
Re:Fuck You, USA (Score:4, Interesting)
What else is there to say? I would start by telling your telecommunications carrier to encrypt every single SS7 link they own. Different keys on every channel, in every trunk, everywhere, all of them. That one act would be utterly blinding. This 'meta data' problem could be solved easily and permanently, there is just no incentive to do so when your arms are tied or there is money to be made.
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I would start by telling your telecommunications carrier to encrypt every single SS7 link they own.
They are a part of the cabal - haven't you been paying attention?
What incentive does you carrier have to help you and not them? They carry a bigger stick.
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You act as if they're not part of the deal...
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Also, some commercial encryption has back doors.
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Thank you. That's exactly it, isn't it?
What else is there to say.
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How about "you are under arrest, you have the right to remain silent but anything you do say can be used against you in a court of law", or whatever the local equivalent is.
Individual countries should at least put out arrest warrants for NSA employees so that they can't travel there. Any EU country that does it can make it an EU wide warrant. It may not result in any arrests but at least there would be some repercussions for the US.
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"The UK and Iran do it too" isn't exactly putting a positive spin on things.
Re:Fuck You, USA (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how erosion of freedom works. At first, you pride yourself with being "free" while looking down at others who are not. Then you're happy that you're "free-er" than the other one. And in the end, all that's left is being happy that they're even worse off.
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Every country is doing it to some degree or another. Right or wrong.
It's just that it's explicitly illegal for the NSA to be doing it in the US.
Ironically, if this was the FBI instead of the NSA, it'd all be legal.
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Re:Fuck You, USA (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, yes, that's how the human mind works. If you let someone get away with it, more will follow suit.
I remember an experiment where a "No littering" sign was put up on a corner where people used to dump their trash. They cleaned up the place and put up the sign, and then they observed what happened. A few people came up with their bulky waste, saw the sign, saw that it was clean and turned around with their waste. Nobody dumped their trash.
Then they placed a few items of "waste" underneath the sign and continued to observe. Again, people came by with trash and they had no qualms dumping their trash right underneath the "no littering" sign, simply because they were not the first to break the law. Someone else already did, so it's ok.
Don't let any government get away with it. If one of them does it, it's ok for the others to follow.
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Never said it made it ok, was just saying that "Fuck you USA" is kind of an idiotic response to something that's likely much more widespread than just one country. It'd be like saying "Fuck you Toyota" because you don't like cars with four wheels.
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They're the only ones who got exposed until now, but it's quite obvious most countries with proper Intelligence services will be doing the same... Fuck you, World! ;-)
Blame the Victims (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying its ok, but what did people think was going to happen when they started carrying around devices that store and report their physical position every few minutes. Somebody is getting that data. If its not the NSA, then its a phone company or an advertising company or police officers or etc...
Re:Blame the Victims (Score:4, Informative)
Except you could have sued the phone company if Congress had not passed a retro-active law that stripped citizens of their rights to do so.
Re:Blame the Victims (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a lack of understanding. Or a lack of options in who else to vote for. Or a stunning indifference that as long as you feel safe you don't care about everyone else. Or a sense of entitlement. Or extreme hypocrisy about freedom.
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Love this quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, said “there is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cellphone location information about cellphones in the United States.”
The dude is quite the contortionist... the statement basically tells us absolutely nothing.
On second thought - it tells us everything.
Re:Love this quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Possible meanings of that quote:
1 - We're collecting it unintentionally
2 - We're collecting it without authority
3 - We're not doing it in bulk, each one is individually collected
4 - We're not doing it in the US, only everywhere else
5 - We're collecting information, just not location information
6 - We're using subcontractors that are not part of the "intelligence community"
7 - We're considering the entity doing it something other than an "element"
8 - We're collecting it from devices other than cellphones
9 - We're collecting location information about people, not about cellphones
10 - I am the very model of a modern major-general.
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6 - We're using subcontractors that are not part of the "intelligence community"
Or as a variation:
11. We're collecting data on everybody except in the US, which we swap with the UK for data they can't collect. This close cooperation with foreign agencies is of course not counted. The only thing you can be sure of from the NSA leaks is that even if your own country doesn't spy on you, all other countries sure do with USA at the head of the class.
Re:Love this quote (Score:5, Insightful)
You could infer
11 - The NSA didn't have to collect the data at all because Telecom companies gave them the data "freely".
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5 - We're collecting information, just not location information
My bet would be this. They collect signal strength and association data from cell towers. It is then simple to transform that to a location, but the transform happens on their sever so they didn't "collect" it.
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Damnit, I drive right past there on my way home from work every day.
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...it tells us everything.
Exactly. Which people who don't think outside the box will see "everything" as "we have nothing to worry about, they only go after terrorists and the ends justify the means". Meanwhile, there is no "official" "authority" that this guy can allude to publicly, most likely because intricate details of exactly what they're collecting and prevention of abuse of the system is "classified", so how would we ever really know? Fuck we wouldn't know shit at all if Snowden didn't have the balls to do what he did. I
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Re:Love this quote (Score:5, Interesting)
The more qualified a statement is, the more likely it is a lie by omission.
That applies to all areas of life, but is extremely useful when interpreting the statements of politicians and other "authorities".
Metadata (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on how you define metadata. Nowadays the line between privacy, metadata and your last name, habits, shopping, etc seems to be a single "SELECT" line involving one or two tables.
The information is obviously a valuable law enforcement tool. Just like phone records, like wiretapping (under a judge auth.).
At least my perception, way before snowden and all the latest leaks, was that this was actually happening. This is just a confirmation.
Would be great if, as in wiretapping, this would be supervised by justice, and used only in criminal investigations. Sound naive ...i know
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Depends on how you define metadata. Nowadays the line between privacy, metadata and your last name, habits, shopping, etc seems to be a single "SELECT" line involving one or two tables.
The information is obviously a valuable law enforcement tool. Just like phone records, like wiretapping (under a judge auth.).
At least my perception, way before snowden and all the latest leaks, was that this was actually happening. This is just a confirmation.
Would be great if, as in wiretapping, this would be supervised by justice, and used only in criminal investigations. Sound naive ...i know
That's probably a pretty good definition of what separates data from metadata. A single JOIN clause.
Re:Metadata (Score:5, Insightful)
(Warrantless) Metadata: That info with which the King of England would have rounded up the Founding Fathers, and thus they would have considered it part of search and sezure protections.
This "it's just metadata" is a fraud.
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up, please, as this is the standard against which we ought to be evaluating infringements of the Bill of Rights.
(It works for the Second Amendment too: if any particular restriction on guns would have prevented the Founding Fathers from being able to revolt, then it is unconstitutional.)
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Metadata is just data about data. This can be almost anything. For voice recordings, you could reasonably claim the following information to be metadata:
- Existence of keywords or keyphrases
- Voice signatures, identifying the speakers
- Stress levels of the voices
If you look at how US agencies are gaming the legal system, they will probably claim that transcripts of conversations are not the conversations themselves and therefore metadata.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on how you define metadata. Nowadays the line between privacy, metadata and your last name, habits, shopping, etc seems to be a single "SELECT" line involving one or two tables.
The information is obviously a valuable law enforcement tool. Just like phone records, like wiretapping (under a judge auth.).
At least my perception, way before snowden and all the latest leaks, was that this was actually happening. This is just a confirmation.
Would be great if, as in wiretapping, this would be supervised by justice, and used only in criminal investigations. Sound naive ...i know
Even in your WEAKEST definition of metadata, it's still FAR to invasive. [kieranhealy.org] The preceding link walks thorough an easy to follow demonstration how a few simple rows in "one or two tables" and some matrix multiplication can be used. In short: You are ignorant, please educate yourself. The "law enforcement tools" are only ever used against people, never for them; [youtube.com] Innocent or not, it's the job of prosecutors to prosecute. Parallel construction [wikipedia.org] is a technique in active wide-spread use by Law Enforcement Agenice
NSA Delenda Est (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the idea the folks in Utah had to cut off the water supply from the NSA facility so they're unable to cool their hardware and it melts. An across-the-board move to shun them and their conspirators in Washington would send the clear message that they had better change course and obey the law before the American people compel them through more drastic measures.
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NSA spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting spin
"One senior collection manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity but with permission from the NSA, said “we are getting vast volumes” of location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. Additionally, data are often collected from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones every year."
You are supposed to infer from that, that only Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones are the ones tracked. When it's not, it's Americans at home too, the tower ids are in the metadata he's already admitted they collect.
“there is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cellphone location information about cellphones in the United States.”
Police Officer : "Did you murder that woman?"
Knife carrying suspect, caught as scene of crime, covered in victims blood: "I had no authority to intentionally kill that woman"
Kind of like the thing from "The Dark Knight" (Score:2)
But it's okay if the carriers track us? (Score:3)
Just checking - the carriers are all tracking our movements as well, and using the data for profit.
I understand the outrage over the NSA doing it, I'm just checking to see if we're all fine with the corporations doing the same thing for profit as part of our wonder free-market society.
All goyim must worship Israel or die (Score:4, Informative)
Bow to Israel, or we will know that you did not. Our eyes see everywhere.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents [theguardian.com]
Joke's on them (Score:2)
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
"Anyone surprised by this? I imagined they were doing that anyway"
No. They said in the past, that they would log the metadata of citizens doing foreign calls.
They just didn't mention that they also log all the metadata of "all foreign countries", because per definition all they are doing are 'foreign calls'.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
And if any foreign government was doing this to America it would be deemed an act of war.
So at some point, you more or less have to expect the rest of the world to start yelling really loudly to their leaders that they're not willing to put up with this any more.
I would like to think some countries will grow some balls and start saying "you know that navy base, you have to leave now".
If this was Russia or China, America would be indignant. Since it's America, Americans treats it like it's their right. The rest of us don't agree and have no desire to be beholden to your security interests. Because we don't see that your rights supersede ours.
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This expands beyond that in another way, too: according to TFA, they're not just getting a location reading when a call is actually made ("call metadata"), but monitoring the location the entire time the phone is turned on and connected to the network.
The possibility
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I'm surprised at the way they were doing it. I'd think they'd have a backdoor into the telco to do this, but apparently this location info normally gets sent out of the country and they just had to intercept it? WTF?
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I'm surprised at the way they were doing it. I'd think they'd have a backdoor into the telco to do this, but apparently this location info normally gets sent out of the country and they just had to intercept it? WTF?
That's what makes it legal. They are intercepting foreign communications, not domestic.
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Had this not been documented and proven beyond reasonable doubt, countless people including you would have dismissed it.
There's a big difference between a hypothesis and a hypothesis backed by evidence. The first one is like assholes, except everyone has a million of them.
Re:Dear citizens of USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Dancing with the Stars is on and it's that nasty Obamacare that's the real threat to freedom!!!
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Don't worry, next time they're gonna vote for the other branch of The Party and everything will be better.
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... Or even don't go to the church/mosque next door, but have an inaccuracy or error in your GPS.
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Sonic transmission of data does not make infection possible. If it were possible, systems would crash all the time from random noise picked up by microphones.
Hmmmm... (Stares at PC who has mysteriously frozen... Again..... Despite IT's assertion that there is 'nothing wrong with your computer').
Tap. Tap. Tap. "Is this thing on?"